KosherEye.com

There's no secret to working with pie and tart doughs, but there are tricks: Be gentle, keep everything cool, use just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to your work surface, and allow doughs to rest before rolling and before baking them. You don't need fancy accessories to make things beautiful. You just need a rolling pin, patience, and a few tricks of the trade.

Use just enough flour on your cool work surface to ensure that your dough doesn't stick. Gently dust your rolling pin with flour as well, because the dough can stick on the bottom and the top.

Roll the dough from the middle out, using even strokes. Rotate the dough in increments of about an eight of a turn after each stroke with the rolling pin, this way, you'll end up with a close-to-perfect round for your crust. Trim the round to keep the circle of dough neat.

Transport the finished round carefully. Roll it loosely onto your rolling pin to transfer it to the pie plate. This keeps the dough intact and keeps it from stretching.

Transport the finished round carefully. Roll it loosely onto your rolling pin to transfer it to the pie plate. This keeps the dough intact and keeps it from stretching.

Leave an inch overhang when lining the bottom of a pie plate. For a single-crust pie, tuck the overlap under and then crimp the edges. For a double crust, gently crimp the top and bottom edges together and then tuck under any dough that's hanging over. I make it a point never to allow the edge of my crust to extend much beyond the edge of the actual pie pan. For terribly tender dough, the edges tend to fall off. Let the pie plate work for you, with the rim of the baking dish acting as a prop to keep the delicate crimped edges in place.